


Gellert's Run

by earthphoenix (roughknuckles)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-29
Updated: 2007-11-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughknuckles/pseuds/earthphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angry German. Gellert is having a bad day. Being hurt and feeling humiliated after an accident, every point of failure that he has experienced in his life so far comes rushing back into his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gellert's Run

" _Sie Kann es tun selbst!_ " Gellert sneered, pushing his aunt’s carriage horse faster and faster on the cobblestone road, already angry that he was being sent into the muggle part of town to get a particular cheese from the local dairy. The horse’s hooves scraped horribly with each sharp turn Gellert made, keeping a tight hold on the reins as he leaned forward in the saddle, his robes snapping sharply like a whip just behind him.  
  
The villagers who saw the hell-rider approach cleared the street, but all it took was the one that didn’t. In a second, Gellert’s mount collided into a mule pulling a wagon of bricks. Both horses stumbled, whinnying and screaming, desperate to stand again on their thin legs while Gellert’s body flew forward, over his horse’s head like a cannonball, slamming into the wall of the dairy, back first and upside down, sliding and hitting the ground, his neck supporting the weight of his body for only a second before it rolled over itself and he lay quite still on the ground. 

*                *                *

Albus Dumbledore was busy that morning, feeding his younger sister a bowl of porridge and milk. She wasn't speaking this morning, and seemed to have regressed back to being a toddler despite being fourteen. He scraped a little more of the cereal from the bowl with the wooden spoon and held it to her mouth when the young wizard dropped both bowl and spoon and stood suddenly, "No-" he gasped, turning to look out the window, which revealed only his garden.  
  
Arianna whimpered and squirmed in her chair, before her brother took her arm, leading her gently upstairs, "It's bedtime now, my dear-" he said quickly, trying not to panic. "Albus has to go ... it's important ..."

*                *                *

A small crowd was gathered around the limp, bleeding young man when just after a small popping noise could be heard. A tall, red-haired young man in similar dress strode closer. "Excuse me, step aside please ..."  
  
"… open your eyes" Gellert had been telling himself as they kept rolling back into his head each time he attempted to move, his hands closed into fists, which he slammed into the ground, _open your eyes, open your eyes_ , "open …"  
  
"Yes, I'm his brother- Gellert ..." Albus held Gellert's hand, "GELLERT?"  
  
Gellert’s eyes rolled around in his head, peeking out through drowsy lids in one direction, focused on the crowd, then in another, almost focused on Albus, "… your eyes … open your …"   
  
Albus smiled, squeezing Gellert's fingers, "There you are, dear brother. Can you move?"  
  
Gellert began to sit up, though as he did, the whites of his eyes showed again and he cursed, fisting his hair, "Get up!"  
  
Albus's blue eyes widened and he picked Gellert up quickly, standing and marching him straight through the curious crowd, into the woods where he apperated with Gellert back into his livingroom.  
  
Gellert groaned at the sudden movement, "Get off me! I can do it! _Schwachsinnig_! OPEN YOUR EYES"  
  
Albus ran up the stairs with Gellert in his arms and laid him on the bed, "Gellert, it's Albus" he murmured, sitting beside him, conjuring a soft, clean, cool cloth and putting it behind Gellert's head to soak up the blood. "It's Albus, you're safe now, can you hear me?"  
  
"Albus? What are you doing here? I can't ... Uh ... this is ABSURD."  
  
"Where are you, Gellert? Where are we now?" Albus asked calmly, putting a little pressure against the wound as he undid Gellert's shirt and tie deftly with one hand.  
  
"Why are you here, we could have gone to the village together."  
  
"Where is here?" Albus asked again, fingers over the pulse in Gellert's pale, long neck.  
  
Gellert was quite for a long time, just breathing hard, jaw tight before he forced his eyes open again, looking straight up, "Your bedroom. W- _verdammen mich_!"  
  
Albus nodded, smiling a little down at Gellert, "You've hurt your neck and your head is cut." A few thin glass vials of potion few to Albus's hand and he uncorked one, smelling it quickly before he smeared some on his fingers and began to rub it over Gellert's throat, from back to front on both sides, "This will take the swelling down very quickly and " Albus cleaned his hands with a spell and dabbed some light blue oil from a very small second vial onto one finger, "this will stop your bleeding and bring down any bruising inside your skull ... " Albus parted Gellert's gold curls and smeared the tingling blue oil around the cut carefully.  
  
Gellert fisted the bed sheets over and over, beginning to hit the bed angrily, "This is unnecessary, I’m quite alright!"  
  
Albus frowned, looking at Gellert's eyes through his gold rimmed glasses, "Gellert, why are you so angry?" he asked softly.  
  
Gellert growled like some sort of wild thing, mumbling and cursing in German, his anger only growing as it circled around in his head, "Stop coddling me! I can take care of myself!"  
  
Albus arched an auburn eyebrow, "Very well," he stood, "in that case, I will return shortly." Albus left the room quietly, shutting the door behind him.  
  
"Get up, GET UP." Gellert continued to curse himself in German and then dipping into a few other, older languages before staggering out of bed. Huffing and cursing as he made his way to the bathroom, steadying himself, his hands against the wall before him as he looked into the mirror, assessing himself.   
  
Gellert had dark, almost black circles under both eyes, his nose was bleeding, his tongue was bleeding from where he'd bitten it when he fell, and Gellert's normally rosy skin was chalk white, with swirls of shimmering green over his throat where Albus had spread the potion.  
  
Gellert glared at himself, "WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SUCH AN IDIOT?!" He screamed, the image shattering and falling into shards into the sink and floor at his feet. He turned on the tap to the bathtub, letting it run, slowing filling as his boots broke the larger shards of glass further, beginning to undress, looking down at his skin, the bruises that were already beginning to well up.  
  
"Wait ..." A soft, British voice behind Gellert spoke before all of the glass was swept away from around Gellert's feet, exiled to a far corner where it could be cleaned later. "The hot water tap is rather finicky on this tub." Albus turned it so that the water began to steam properly. "I really should replace it, my apologies."  
  
Gellert was oddly quiet now, he just nodded a little, acknowledging Albus as his fingers continued to absently touch his own chest, feeling out the hard, tight spots just staring at the tub.  
  
"If you'd like," Albus held out the very small vial of precious blue oil, "putting some of this on your bruises will help them heal without complication."  
  
"Thankyou." Gellert reached over, touching the side of Albus’s hand before slipping the vial from his fingertips. He was replaying the accident over and over, more heightened, and more foolish each time he reviewed it in his mind.  
  
"Accidents" Albus sighed, "happen every day, Gellert, do not judge yourself too harshly."  
  
"Accidents." Gellert repeated roughly, "Happen to people who don’t know better."   
  
Albus took the potion and daubed some on his fingertips, applying it to the dark spots on Gellert's chest. "No one knows better all of the time, Gellert. It very easily could have been me who'd been riding too fast, I do that too often. Would you think less of me?"  
  
"You say as much, but you wouldn’t have. You would not have done something so foolish."  
  
"I've done foolish things, Gellert. I've fallen off of horses. I set the bed curtains in my school dorm on fire in fourth year."  
  
"Yes?" Gellert scowled, "And did you also get expelled from school? Did you also cause the death of three fellow students, and injured ten more in the process? Were you a false witness in a hearing, just so that a bad man could be imprisoned, regardless of the evidence? Tell me, Albus, and were you banished from your home by your family because the shame was just too much?"  
  
Albus swallowed hard, "No" he said honestly, "no. I haven't had those things happen to me, and I'm sorry they happened to you." Albus helped the turbulent young man take his shirt off, and began to treat his back slowly, rubbing the ointment in with care, "but I left my mother to care for my crazy sister while I was off at a conference in Cairo ... and she died because she couldn't fight back alone. My parents were never proud of me either, I think they wished I was more like Aberforth, and once in second year I slapped Elphias across the face during lunch just to see what he would do. I'm not perfect, Gellert. My imperfections may not yet have had the spotlight, but they are there, and I know that now and then, they catch up to me." Albus planted a soft, very gentle kiss to Gellert's shoulder, "And your family was wrong, as was your school ... but I'm selfishly grateful that they sent you to my arms instead."  
  
" _Ich_ \- I’m tired of being a mistake." Gellert sighed, eyes closing a little, the lids of which felt hot and the back of his eyes began to hurt again.   
  
Albus took Gellert into his arms, hugging him from behind, setting the vial down. " _Mein liebe_ , you are never, never a mistake to me."  
  
"You learned German."  
  
Albus smiled, "Only a couple of words for now. The most important ones."  
  
Gellert rubbed at his temple, his hair muddy with blood, "I wanted, very much to use this as a chance to start over … do things right, without mistakes."  
  
"It is just one mistake, Gellert." Albus murmured against Gellert's temple, "Just one small mistake. If you'd like, I'll make a mistake too, and then we'll be even."  
  
"Do not suggest any such falling to my level." Gellert sat on the edge of the tub very carefully and began to take off his boots.  
  
"You rode a horse too fast." Albus reminded him, undoing Gellert's belt for him chastely. "A mule didn't move out of your way fast enough, I hardly think that constitutes falling an entire level."  
  
Gellert however remained devastated that he was not as great as he pretended to be.  
  
Albus sighed, "Gellert ..." the red haired wizard moved around in front of the German boy, keeping an arm around his waist.  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"You are still brilliant."  
  
"You still think so?"  
  
"Yes." Albus nodded fondly, his brilliant sapphire eyes sure.  
  
"I don't like needing help. That is the hardest thing for me."  
  
"Neither do I, to tell you the truth, but it would please me greatly if you'd allow me to play mediwizard with you" he smiled gently.   
  
"If you must." Gellert smiled a little.  
  
"Thank you" he murmured, helping Gellert out of his trousers and into the bath that Albus had inundated with salts and other healing potions so that Gellert's body relaxed and all of the pain eased.  
  
Gellert wiggled his toes at the end of the bath with a sigh, quite for a moment before something occurred to him, "Where were you?"  
  
"What do you mean where was I?"  
  
"In the village, where were you that you saw what happened?"  
  
Albus sat on the side of the tub, rolling up his long, scarlet sleeves before he started to rinse Gellert's hair with handfulls of water, "I was here, at home."  
  
Gellert frowned a little, "How did you know then?"  
  
Albus kept washing Gellert's hair, very, very gently, "I ... just knew. I was feeding Arianna some porridge, and then I knew."  
  
"But how? I didn't ... not even a flare, I never even had the chance to yell."  
  
"My father was like that, with my mother. He always knew when she was in trouble, or ill, even from a great distance."  
  
"That's ... an interesting family trait."  
  
Albus just smiled, shyly. "I put Ariana in bed and apperated a second after, and there you were."  
  
"You didn't even know where you were going?"  
  
"I could see it clearly in my head."  
  
"Truly?" Gellert looked up, rather astonished.  
  
Albus lathered some shampoo between his hands and started to work it through the wet, angelic curls with a satisfied smile. "Truly" he nodded, "I could see you laying where you were, I knew the horse had stopped and you fell off, I knew you were bleeding and I just ... went. There was no question."  
  
"Has that happened to you before?"

"No" Albus confessed, "not even with my mother."  
  
"Then I'm sorry. That must have been horrible for you as well."   
  
Dumbledore started to rinse the soap out of Gellert's hair gently, making sure his cut stayed healed shut. Albus paused, looking down at Gellert's eyes with the feeling that perhaps for the first time, Gellert saw him, really saw him. "Thank you" Albus swallowed, "it ... was far from easy."  
  
Gellert closed his eyes a little, "I am not incapable of doing my own hair, you know. This is part of your medi-wizard training, is it?"   
  
Albus laughed, "Mmm, yes. Patient hair styling is crucial." Albus kept rubbing Gellert's scalp, twisting strands of rapidly drying gold around his fingers like rings, watching them gleam. "How does the rest of you feel?"  
  
"Is it foolish, still, that I cannot even say? I think at this moment, I am completely unaware."  
  
"It could be the bath, or slight shock, so I think it's time you had a rest in bed." Albus trailed his fingers through Gellert's hair and stood, summoning his own soft, scarlet bathrobe from the other room, laying it over a nearby chair and offering his hands to Gellert, "I'll be a gentleman, I promise."  
  
"What fun is that?" Gellert smiled a little, though his actions were a little bit more reserved then what he was known for, this was him being careful.  
  
"For now, at least, this will have to suffice." Albus supported Gellert's unsteady body and wrapped the warmed robe around him before guiding him back to bed.   
  
Albus laid Gellert down slowly, laying beside him as he pulled the warm blankets up.  
  
"Thank you ... I'm sorry, before when I yelled ... thank you."  
  
"You were in pain, and humiliated. I understand."  
  
Albus watched Gellert's profile fondly as he played with his beloved's hair, gentle fingers ghosting against his scalp.  
  
"Still. The anger was meant to be directed at myself, not you." Gellert reached up and took his hand, "Lay with me? Or ... will you use the time to do something else?"  
  
Albus smiled and laid down, deeply pleased. Gellert never asked for anything, and knowing he comforted Gellert to any extent thrilled Albus a little, making his eyes glow with pleasure. "There is nothing I'd rather do, Gellert."  
  
"Today was ... _shcr_ \- ... terrible. But this is better." Gellert sighed, still holding Albus's hand.  
  
Albus threaded their fingers together, still watching Gellert breathe beside him, "I'm glad, and yes, for me as well it's much, much better now." Albus reached over and stroked Gellert's face with his careful fingertips, "you are safe."  
  
Gellert bit at Albus's finger, smirking, "But your finger is not."  
  
Albus sighed with a smile, draping his arms over Gellert like a Lion falling asleep with his favorite cub.

**Author's Note:**

> co-authored. originally written for thestralskinphoenixtears


End file.
